Regulation in the UK is undergoing fundamental change. Dissatisfaction with self-regulation and the self-regulatory organizations intensified steadily during the 1990`s. The failure of regulation to avert the Maxwell pension collapse and the widespread selling of inappropriate pension policies...

This paper examines the relation between financial, corporate and legal systems, and economic performance in different countries. It reviews international comparisons that undertake detailed analyses of individual, developed countries and studies that use large, cross-country data banks,...

Family ownership was rapidly diluted in the twentieth century in Britain. Issuance of equity in the process of acquisitions was the main cause. In the first half of the century, it occurred in the absence of minority investor protection and relied on directors of target firms protecting the...

This paper investigates the governance structure choices of firms when there is competition between legal systems. We study the impact of the allocation of control over choice of governance and reincorporation on firms` technologies and technological specialization of countries in the context of...

In a study of the ownership of German corporations, we find a strong relation between board turnover and corporate performance, little association of concentrations of ownership with managerial disciplining and only limited evidence that pyramid structures can be used for control purposes. The...

This paper reports a new test of capital structure theories. It uses a filtering technique to identify large investment spikes. We find that the spikes are predominantly financed with debt by large firms and with new equity by small firms. In the process of financing large projects, firms move...

While we associate the U.K. with a high level of investor protection, this was not the case in the first half of the twentieth century - U.K. capital markets were marked by an absence of investor protection and few common law rights for minorities. Notwithstanding this, securities markets...

A recent report by Paul Myners for the UK Treasury has provided a wealth of information on the structure and operation of the pension fund industry in the UK. The report points to serious deficiencies in the governance of pension funds. These concerns are of considerable significance in their...

This paper evaluates relations between industrial activity and the structure of countries’ financial, ownership and legal systems. Using data on 27 industries in 14 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 1995, we evaluate whether the structure of countries` systems is associated with...